iMovie After you’ve made a change to your project, you may want to preview it by playing just a few seconds of video and then make further adjustments. iMovie provides keyboard shortcuts to make this quick preview easier.
To see a quick preview of your edit:
In the Project browser, make sure the playhead (the red vertical line) is placed at the point where you made the edit, and then do one of the following:
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Press the Left Bracket key ([) to play one second of video, starting from 0.5 seconds before where the playhead is resting.
If the playhead is resting within a frame range that’s selected (has a yellow border around it), pressing the Left Bracket key plays only 0.5 seconds of video, either starting at the beginning of the selection or finishing at the end of the selection, depending on which side of the selection the playhead is nearer to.
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Press the Right Bracket key (]) to play three seconds of video, starting from 1.5 seconds before where the playhead is resting.
If the pointer is resting within a frame range that is selected (has a yellow border around it), pressing the Right Bracket key plays only 1.5 seconds of video, either starting at the beginning of the selection or finishing at the end of the selection, depending on which side of the selection the playhead is nearer to.
iMovie also provides other keyboard shortcuts to help you work more efficiently. Go to this topic to see a list of all shortcuts: Keyboard shortcuts and shortcut menus.